Kenneth Rijock

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

WHEN CONDUCTING DUE DILIGENCE, TAKE ALL CHINESE RESOURCES WITH A GRAIN OF SALT

There have been multiple complaints, by Western authors, to the effect that they have noticed that certain passages within their work, being printed for Chinese consumption, were deleted, if they contained any segments that were unflattering, or embarrassing, to the Government of China. China simply had their printers remove anything it found objectionable.

It is a common practice with all Chinese media. Remember this when you are conducting due diligence, or enhanced due diligence, on Chinese PEPs or companies, whether they be state-owned, or privately held. The negative information that you are looking to uncover about your target may have already been removed. Use external sources, from outside China, wherever possible, to get a cleaner, and clearer, picture of the individual or entity that you are looking at. Hong Kong resources are generally preferable to anything from Mainland China, unless they themselves rely upon Chinese source material.

This also means that, if you are looking at English-language translations of Chinese material, you will want to look critically at the source, if the original was first published inside China. Corruption details, and negative information on your target, probably were redacted by Chinese authorities.

This does not mean that you dismiss all China-source material; just understand that you are not getting the complete picture, warts and all, from it.